Epilogue Ronald Reagan and the Historians

Abstract

For many years academic historians, many of them liberal Democrats, gave Ronald Reagan a bad press. In a survey of historians taken between 1988 and 1990 some 62 percent rated him as either below average as a president or even a failure.¹ Representative of this assessment was the history published by Michael Schaller in 1992, which argued that Reagan’s appeal was “based on his easy charm, not his talent or accomplishment.”² While Schaller admired Reagan’s communication skills, he described a president who was barely in charge of his administration, he emphasized the scandals associated with it, and questioned whether Reagan deserved much credit for ending the Cold War. Reagan emerged as sort of sincere Wizard of Oz, an illusionist who believed in his illusions: “Reagan succeeded, as few actors or politicians have, in persuading Americans to suspend their disbelief. It was an era when saying something made it so, when, as in a daydream, anything seemed possible.”³ Leading journalists too offered less than admiring analyses. In what remains the best biography of Reagan, Lou Cannon presented him as a man with considerable gifts but also serious limitations, a supremely self-confident president who was able to set a direction for his administration but whose lack of curiosity and his failure to analyze issues in depth meant that he was somewhat at the mercy of his staff.⁴ Haynes Johnson offered a president who failed to address the real problems of the country, one who was “sleepwalking through history.”⁵